Fruits of Exactitude

Literally everything I eat that does not come in premeasured portions goes on the food scales these days. And all of it gets journalled. I am aiming to stay below my BMR so all of my movement calories go towards creating a deficit. As per today I am back down 5.6 kilograms from the highest point regained. The first belts that I could not close any more are back in use. So are my last to not fit jeans. I know that I still have a long way to go until I reach goal. But, after stripping away all the fatlogic, I do at last believe again it is possible for me to go back down to goal weight. 

Weight this morning: 92 kilograms. 

ReRailing

I am presently trying to get back on track after that weeklong binge. Premenopause is a real bitch, it seems. I had not had my period for three months, and when it came I definitely lost the fight against the cravings that brought along. Luckily, the visitor has gone, and so have the cravings.

If I want to get down to  69 kilos before the day I have to face my relatives again, I have to make a weekly deficit of 3084 calories, or a daily one of 441. That does not sound so hard until I see that my basal metabolism is just 1328 calories, and it takes at least half an hour's walking to get my working calories above 500. Which means that on Sundays, when I typically stay inside, I do not meet that goal. Nor do I when with MIL, unless I do errands on foot. Which in turn means that I have to be really strict on all other days. 

Life's a bitch. And then you diet. 

Inescapable Math

There is an app for almost anything, they say. 

And if there is not, there is one that can be used off-topic, so to say, to do what one wanted. 

For keeping a running total of my caloric intake, I have downloaded what is originally a financial tallykeeping app. I have used that since September 1st, and every day when entering my in and out totals I was watching the deficit grow. Until the weekend, that is. Due to hormonal fluctuations (don't ask how I know...) I was absolutely ravenous for two days. I decided not to restrict myself overly, and found myself at least (not journalled everything, actually) 2000 calories over and above what I would have needed on either day, even though I was also doing a lot of walking on Saturday. So, not only has all of the deficit I had so painstakingly created gone up in smoke, no, I have, for this month, a 500 calorie minimum surplus that I have to spend before even starting to really lose fat relatively to the beginning of the month. 

The problem being that I still feel hungry. 

No wonder my weekly intake and expense never evened out. As I have remarked more than once, the true miracle is that I am not yet back at a BMI of over 40. 

And I have squandered one of the just 60 weeks I have to get myself to goal weight. 

Weight this morning: 95 kilograms or 209 pounds. 

Small victories and water retention

I did, over the last days, manage to take in less calories than I expended.

Barely. 

And after eating a single Texas Double Burger at Burger King yesterday, only to be flabbergasted to see that was well over 900 calories, without fries and coke, I can tell what the next lesson is. Look before you bite. 

Add to that the fact that in spite of being under my calories, I have gained over two pounds from yesterday to today,which means retaining over a liter of water, and you get one frustrated bunny. 

Today, the afternoon slump clamored for something cakey, so I bought a muffin. 

Instead of wolfing down the whole thing on the way back from the bakery, I kept it intact and put it on the food scale that now lives in my office. A good thing I did, too. Running the weight of that- not even big-looking- muffin through the calorie counter I found that it would have hit me almost as hard as that burger yesterday. So what I did is cut the thing in half and keep the second half for tomorrow. 

On the confession front, if I got a yen for bakery goods, in the past that meant buying at least two, most often three pieces, and eating all of them in one go, on top, of course, of a full day`s meals, thereby bringing myself at least by a thousand calories into the zone of too much. 

Reading the last days´ entries in my food log is actually quite instructive, in that what keeps popping up ist the fact that I have a serious tendency towards calorie-dense stuff, thereby creating major caloric havoc with diminutive-looking portions of food. Barely eating anything, indeed, if one looks only at the volume or number of items consumed. Still, with my low TDEE, that barely anything is already much too much. 

The only way to go is switching to less calorie-dense foods. In other words, vegetables, fruit and low-fat dairy. Pickles, too. And lean meat. 

And keeping my daily step count up. I have set myself a 7500 steps goal for now, which I have regularly met the last days, in spite of the heat. 

Which still just prevented a caloric plus from being eaten. Instead of the 450 calorie deficit I would have needed to be on plan. 

My eating habits don´t need finetuning, they need a complete revamp. 

I do not want to go to that family affair any heavier than I was for the last one. 

That's why you are fat...

Brennwert der Lebensmittel: 18735 kJ (4475 kcal) Tagesbedarf: 5560 kJ (1328 kcal) 337% des Tagesbedarfs an Energie aufgenommen

I ran the typical intake of a typical day of unrestricted eating through my journalling

 app. Mind you, without the one beer I would usually have had with my dinner. That would add another 200 calories, bringing me to 4675 calories. Assuming the usual amount of walking (the Tagesbedarf number is pure BMR without accounting for movement) that would take my calories out to about 1900,  that would mean an excess of 2775 calories for a typical day. Again, all the while believing I was eating normally. Statistically, eating like that would have made me gain 145 kilos in a single year *shudder*. 

There but for fortune...

Seeing those numbers, what I should be astonished about is not why I did not lose any weight. It is why I am not hopelessly morbidly obese by now. 

I read somewhere that caloric needs are about 300 calories a day elevated in people who smoke. But even adding that, I could have gained 124 kilos in a year eating like that, all the while protesting I did not eat that much.

I keep remembering that quarrel I had with my father after gaining those last twenty kilos in three months, me screaming at him that he did not understand, that it was the meds I had been taking, and that no way on earth could I have overeaten by 2000 calories a day without noticing. 

Boy was I wrong.

If it is possible to go that far above my calories with just one sleeve of cookies, one pack of peanuts, one bowl of chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce and three small salami sausages, while skipping lunch and having a three egg breakfast and a portion controlled dinner, then any day where I allowed myself more than a single indulgence was a complete caloric desaster.

I know why I hesitated so long to do this exercise. I had guessed it would turn out results I would not like. 

What the strict journalling also turns out is the reason why I am once more plateauing, in spite of eating at a felt deficit.  Because the deficit I really eat at is so small that I would take between one and two months to lose a single kilogram of fat. 

I weigh 94 kilos, still, as of today. And I have about 50 per cent of body fat. 

And I want to get down to at least 69 kilograms. That would be normal BMI. 

Which means I have 25 kilograms to lose. If I really want to be there by next November I need a 420 calories a day deficit. Not a 150 calories one. 

And all for those indulgences that are so not worth it. 

Psyching myself up for the big cut. 

It's difficult

No, once again, I'm not eating a lot. And still the deficit I run comes in about 300 calories a day, on good days. Way too little to make remarkable inroads into the weight that has to come off until next November. 

On the things I no longer may eat or drink list, the green peppermint or sour apple liqueurs are top contenders. Seeing how they amount to some 600-700 calories a glass, I think it is better not to have them in the house at all. Cheese, from a block or  Camembert style, and salami are next. Of cookies I dare not even think any more. And the bread or rusk with a generous pat of butter plus peanut butter habit has to go, too. 

Seeing all of these work out on my reports, the real miracle is that I did not completely balloon up when not restricting them. 

Slogging on

For the first time in ages, there's a solid downward trend in my weight curve for this month. Seems like I am doing something right. 

Then again, the hubs has been out of town for almost three weeks by now, which saved me from having to cook. 

Still, I kept going well over my allotted intake at BMR level. Seeing just how small a deviation from routine will nix all of a whole day weightloss-wise is actually quite scary. And seeing how calorie-dense all of my favorite foods are, too. As it is, the only thing I like to eat that will not have to be restricted to mini portions is yoghurt, and even there I have to cut way back on the toppings. 

All the other goodies are apt to swallow up my caloric allowance as fast as I swallow them. Salami, cheese, toast with peanut butter, butter, or even a glass of wine or two add up to way too many calories with me still saying, but I barely ate anything. 

To think that after my afternoon snack of the aforementioned goodies I would still have a whole dinner with the hubs, and dessert, too! 

The astonishing part, it seems, is not that I did not lose any weight, but rather, that I did not gain a lot more. 

And that anybody can live, eat three meals a day, and not look like a tub of lard. I will trial-run a day's worth of meals as I remeber them from Grandma's through MFP. In memory, they were not small meals, and I was not going hungry. Yet, I was not fat back then, either, except in my family's eyes. 

Weight today : 94 kilos.

Ways To Motivate

The headline of this post should be pronounced in my best Darth Vader imitation, followed by "I am your father". It just has occurred to me that there will be another of those cannot miss family celebration affairs coming up next year in November. 

So I would better be back to the weight I had when I was meeting those people for the last time, on pains of being mocked and scorned, or insulted once again for being fat. And it would be even better were I to be substantially below that weight. 

Did I say that part of my motivation up and went when the last such occasion passed? This time, I have a realistic chance of getting down to 63 kilograms if I stick to a 500 calorie a day deficit. Faster, if the deficit were bigger. 

That would be the weight at which the person who will be celebrated couldn't stop joaning me about my weight. It also would be very much normal weight and BMI. 

Now there's a reason to persevere if ever there was one. 

Could It Really Be That Easy?

This weighing and measuring everything stuff brings nasty surprises every day. Nasty in the meaning of catching me very very cold at making excuses. 

As it is, I was absolutely convinced that I was not at all overeating. Convinced enough to get into a screaming match with my father after my most spectacular gain. And even when I realized that I must have been having a bit more food than I remembered, even after catching myself with the biiig plates piled high, I thought that these realizations would have made me able to not overeat. 

Add to this that I mostly kept away from sugar and chocolate, and I was once again flabbergasted at regaining half of the weight I had managed to lose. Reading those Paleo books and blogs with their constant refrain of fat not being bad and do not ever start to count calories, you will be automatically stopping eating when you had enough, made me even more confused. The only thing I got from these is a new problem, namely with cravings for fatty food. 

As it was I would have been dead certain that my daily intake was something around 2000 calories a day and that this ought to be maintenance, and that I would easily be able to keep eating a 1000 calorie a day deficit without having to change too many things about my diet.

Boy was I wrong, again. 

My daily intake is really around 2000 calories, now that I try to cut down and stop myself from mindlessly munching. Before that, it might have been anywhere between 3000 and 4000. 

Cutting down to 1000 calories without using meal replacements would probably not work for me. I can be glad if I make a 500 a day deficit. 

And for every single meal or ingredient, I can tentatively assume it is twice as much and has at least twice as many calories than what I would assume. 

Which makes me wonder if all those calorie counters were off in their values. The present one seems to be spot on, if I look at my numbers. 

What pisses me off the most is that even trying very hard to rein in my eating did not prevent this. 

It Works, But Not Miracles

Watching my Fddb weight curve, I noticed having lost about two real kilograms since I started journalling. So, it does work. 

The kicker is seeing how easily and quickly I could burn through all of my calorie allowance, and then some. 

Even looking at the worst ever weight gaining phase I had, namely, sixteen kilograms in four months on a tricyclic, that does compute to just 933 calories that I ate and drank above my needs daily. 

In other words, a bag of nuts. A single one. Of macadamias, not even the whole one. Or a bar of chocolate plus a few cookies. 

Just adding one of these regularly is enough to explain all of the gain. 

So my shitlording father was right. Objectively, that is. 

What he did not take into account was that there  was a reason why I did overeat so much more while on the meds. And the sad fact that my guesstimating skills when it comes to food are as wrecked as my optical portion gauge. Meaning I have to weigh it and measure it, whatever "it" is. 

If I continue to do so, I have a chance of getting back to normal weight somewhere around two years from now. 

Were I to maintain a 350 calories a day deficit, I would be normal-weighted (BMI 25 ) in exactly 500 days from today, mathematically. 

I will have to keep up a list of the deficits per day, and the running total. 

The fairy tale of the wrecked metabolism and the inability to correctly keep up tallying my intake have cost me enough time in obesity. 

Size 38 Skirt

Not what I am fitting into right now, sadly. My present body size is more like a size 46, which means I can, indeed, buy standard sized clothes. 

But I had all this time wondered why they do not have skirts in the proportion I used to wear any more, namely, slightly below my knees. 

Today I found out why.  Actually, the skirts still have the same length. I saw a size 38 skirt today  that was proportioned exactly the way I remembered my pencil skirts from 63 kilogram times. 

Besides that they had the same skirt in a size 50. They were the exact same length. But the size 50 one was simply wider than long. To think that a size 50 would, at my top weight, not have fit me any more...

One more reason to keep up counting those calories. 

Fool me once...

I have changed to a different logging app for my food that is Germany based and has most generic and brand name foods already preinstalled. It also syncs with Fitbit. 

And I have started to weigh and measure my food to get as exact a value as possible. 

Shock number one: Once again, I misestimated what I ate. Namely, the small stuff that I mentally neglected completely. If I want to generate a sizable deficit calorie-wise, these small items completely used it up. As in 50 calories for the little bit of chocolate flakes or 70 calories for a mini dip bowl of vanilla pudding. Or 25 calories per cup of tea with cream. Or 70 for a squirt of whipped cream. I had guesstimated the whole bowl at less than 100. 

Shock number two: It took me a whole week to realize that I must reset my daily calorie allotment to basal metabolic rate if I don´t want the Fitbit calories to be added on top of my brutto calories. 

So, my BMR for my goal weight is 1320 calories. The fitbit has, last week, added some 400 to 800 calories a day. Which means that to make sure of that 500 calorie a day deficit I ought to eat less than 1000 calories a day.

Weight this morning: 96,2 kilos. And it looks like I´m getting my period.   

The Road Is Long...

Day one of measuring, weighing and recording everything I ate. 1400 calories deficit. I would take half a year to lose the flab at that rate. As it is, yes, I am hungry. And I will have to be extra careful over the weekend unless I want to stay stuck in gaining mode. 

Oh, and even the protein powder scoops I serve myself are 50 percent fuller than I assumed. 

I could be down 2,4 kilos of fat by the end of the month. Perhaps plus some water. Would be really nice. 

I cannot remember whether I was as hungry all the time when I last quit smoking. Probably yes. 

Weight today 96,6 kilos. 

Back to Square...one?

I know. It´s hot outside, and it has been hot for over two weeks. And yes, my body is probably retainig water. Still, what I saw this morning on my scales was making all the red lights go on at once, complete with klaxons and whistles. 

98 kilograms before adjusting for brekkie. 

Just two kilos away from that shameful two-zentner mark. 

And I know already that even when it gets cooler most of the regain will not disappear in a water whoosh.

Which means I have to do something fast.  Hmm, a fast would probably be it. Only that would make DH  freak.

Fatlogic.

I got the book by a german author who gives quite a rundown of Lies We Tell Ourselves Why We Are Fat. Guilty on all counts, I fear. 

Things to take along: 

There is no such thing as a starvation mode that would prevent the body from burning off fat. 

-Of course, or else it would be impossible to kill a person by not feeding them once that person had been obese in their life, or what? 

Human thighs do not touch when walking in their state as nature intended it. 

-D´uh. If the ability to walk bare-thighed without getting a serious case of friction burn is an indication of someone being at their nature-intended weight, then I have indeed been overfat my whole life. As it is, I cannot remember ever being able not to wear at least pantyhose to reduce friction and - lets call a spade a spade- chub rub. 

Which means, again, that my father- this hurts to admit- was right about me being overweight. Fuck the height-weight tables. 

Former dieting episodes do not fuck up one´s metabolism for good.

- That was the one I stuck to the most. Daddy forced me to diet at age seven (see above), I dieted several times in my life, that is why dieting does not work for me any more and my metabolism is permanently and irrevocably down in the dumps. What really is out of whack is probably my sense of portion sizes. If I eat what I perceive as normal portions and to a point of what I perceive as satiety I would probably down some six thousand calories a day, without having the feeling of having overeaten. Even now, I can gobble up some two thousand calories between coming home and dinner and still feel  that I have barely eaten anything. 

There is no such thing as a food one may consume ad libitum (except water).

-Reading the low-carb and paleo diet books gave me one problem I did not use to have, Namely, I lost my avoidance of fat as a macronutritient. Now, I have cravings, not so much for carbs but rather for dripping fat. Butter, slathered on half a centimeter thick. Bacon strips with grease dripping out of them. Cream. Sausage. My mouth starts watering when I think of these. 

At home, we never had that kind of food because of my mother´s hep C. I was actually revolted by fatty food, as with like-to-be-MIL´s oil, butter and cream cuisine. 

Today, I crave the stuff. Unfortunately it is all too easy to consume a full day´s worth of calories in the guise of a few bags of nuts, or slices of bread piled high with butter and camembert cheese. 

The one thing I still won´t wrap my mind around is exercise. I hate my body too much to voluntarily engage in any activity that would make me feel my body. Or that would interrupt my surfing and expose me to real life. 

Weightloss that would require me to exercise will never be sustainable for me. So what it comes down to is bite the bit but not the food, count calories and reduce them. 

I have found a german calorie-counting site and app that has a lot more foods saved already than myfitnesspal., and is easier to use when logging. I will have to weigh and measure everything I eat and drink. Perhaps I should bring a pair of food scales to the office, too. 

98 to 62 makes 36 Kilograms to lose. What I want to be able to do is wear a skirt (a long one, of course) with nothing but my panties underneath. Or with nothing at all. Without having the inside of my thighs rubbed raw and bleeding. 

And wear high-heeled boots again without my feet hurting like hell. 

I stopped recondensing after my mother´s birthday, having no more goal to achieve. I do not know just how much of my success up to that point was due to the urgent desire to kick my asshole of a father in the face with high-heeled boots. What I do know is that I did not have a real why any more after that day. And that I never had a goal for myself to achieve. Something that would make me feel good, quite apart from the burning desire for revenge for a fucked-up childhood. 

This heatwave has at least reminded me that there might be something I could wish for. Having to swathe myself in long trousers and compression stockings at 35 degrees centigrade is not what I would like to do. And as the climate is getting ever warmer I would have to do this quite often. NOT. 

80 pounds (non-metric ones) to lose. 280.000 calories of fat to burn. 

If I stay 500 calories below my TEE that would take me 560 days. One and a half years. Or else, I would be at goal at the end of 2016. 

Were I to go down by 1000 calories a day I would need 9 months. Goal date: sometime around April 2016. 

If I were to cut down to a 1500 calories a day deficit, I would be at goal... in December. 2015. Six months. 

But that would mean either eating just 500 calories a day or expending as many. 

So 1000 it is. 

In the time that other women take to make a baby, I want to get rid of the fatty equivalent of quintuplets. Drat. 

But if I do not react now, I might become immobile again. The pain is already back. So are the difficulties dressing or cleaning my body. 

Kicking myself for allowing this to happen again does, unfortunately, not burn enough calories. 

Back in Onederland

The last weeks had some serious upheavals in our household. DH had to stay in hospital for several days after a bad health scare, and one of the things they found out was that he has high blood pressure. Not something unusual in a male over fifty, but it had gone unnoticed for quite a while because he steadfastly refused to go for a checkup. He´s on medication now, and of course, we needed to take a good hard look at the way we are eating. 

That, in turn, means no more chocolate feasts for him, we have switched to nonalcoholic beer only, the salt shaker has been put away, and I have, for two weeks now, done my best to switch our diet around to what is recommended for fighting high BP. I have also downloaded a book on the DASH diet on my kindle, hoping for more information on the dietary requirements in a person with hypertonia. 

While I, myself, tend more towards having hypotonia, i.e. too-low BP, I have gone along with DH´s new diet out of solidarity. I did not actually look to lose weight that way, but the results are pretty impressive. Down nine pounds in two weeks, from the highest point reached regaining. Which means 199 pounds. 

Back in onederland, as they say. DH, too, has been losing steadily.Now he wasn´t as overweight as me to start with, but his after-hours glass of beer and the sweets he used to binge on after dinner had made for quite a bit of a paunch over time, which is the worst place to carry one´s fat. 

As it is, the way we both eat now seems to be quite conducive to weight loss. And solidarity makes for quite a bit of motivation when it comes to not bringing certain things into the house in the first place. The salty crackers and nuts I had become all too fond of are absolutely off-limits for DH, so I don´t buy them any more. The same thing goes for the sweets and chocolate stuff he used to think he couldn´t do without. 

I´ll see how this all pans out over the long haul. Right now, we´re both motivated and ready, and the results are quite convincing. 

Next minigoal: get below 90 kilograms (198 pounds)- I can put the ten-kilo weight down a notch on my scales then. 

Finally. And hopefully for the last time.

Julia

Same old same old

Those 95 kilograms, thankfully, were a one-day mirage that disappeared the next day. But the irregularities in my monthly cycle are continuing- right now it´s a biweekly cycle actually, and every time I retain several pounds´ worth of water before it starts. 

What I am doing is journal my intake religiously. Mathematically, I eat about 1500 to 1600 calories a day. I also walk, on an ordinary workday, about 8000 to 9000 steps. From what my fitbit and myfitnesspal calculations tell me, I ought to be steadily losing. What with PMSing twice a month, I unfortunately cannot confirm that, really, as the average of my weigh-ins still tethers around those pesky 93 kilos, give or take a few grams. But, at least, there is a slightly downwards trend when I look just at the days in between. 

Work-wise, the last weeks were some serious shit. All kinds of Very Urgent and very difficult stuff, which means that my regular stuff has once more fallen by the roadside, necessitating a cleanup over the weekend.

Then again, I am not about to drive myself crazy over that. Nobody but myself is expecting me to be able to work in two places at once, and even I should not. 

Perfectionism is, in that kind of situation, the biggest trap I could fall into. So I shouldn´t. 

Keep calm and carry on. Anything else would be crazy. 

And hope that this is just the usual pre-holiday-season tidal wave of files coming in.

Julia

Starts and fits

Thank goodness there are no more MIL visits planned for the next weeks. The one we did last week surprisingly ended with a stall, weight-wise, which means that I can now go for the loss I have been trying to achieve too often already. And I took advantage of a special offer at a local store on my favourite protein powders, so, there´s enough of them in the pantry to get me through some serious recondensing these next weeks. Of course, DH might interfere, but I am, this time, wildly determined to do what it takes to get me back off this plateau. And that includes cutting down on having dinner together. I am convinced by now that nothing short of an almost-fast will get me through that barrier, so that is what I must do. 

The first time I went below this weight, DH wasn´t in town most of the time which allowed for absolute moderation already when shopping for food. Not having it around meant I couldn´t eat it. And, while I really like having him around, in the presence of DH that kind of frugality just isn´t possible. At least he only wants two meals a day and not three like MIL.

I´ll try to cook a lot of veggies for myself so he won´t notice how little I am eating. 

Gotta stick to my guns this time, or I´ll never get this fat off me again. 

Julia

Two-oh-five

For well over a month now, my weight has been dithering around the 93 kilograms mark. 205 pounds. That seems to be where my weight stabilizes naturally right now. I remember that I was weighing roundabout the same before the reaction to medication I had to take catapulted me up into morbid obesity and a BMI 42 in a matter of months. Three years ago, that was also where I hit my first serious plateau on the way down. So, I should probably not despair if it takes me some time to get off this point. 

Being in for yet another MIL visit, with the attendant problems concerning what to eat, doesn´t exactly foretell greater losses in the next week. She´s a veritable diet hazard. But I´ll try to avoid the stuff that is worst for me, namely, bread. In other aspects, there´s a problem. She will refuse almost everything made with vegetables claiming her delicate stomach doesn´t digest them well, which means that the number of veggies she still eats has dwindled to about four or five, and those only when they are cooked almost into a mash. Ugh!

If I could stay at the weight I´m at today, I might perhaps be able to restart recondensing once we are left again to our own devices food-wise. And tonight, I´ll have a big ass salad. Raw, and with many different veggies in it. Get my nutrition in as long as I can. 

Julia 

Stop Before You Turn

I´m back to doing almost all of the things I did when I started out recondensing three years ago. I log my food, keep under my calories, weigh myself daily and record the results. The only thing I haven´t restarted yet is exercise. I have no idea how to fit that into my schedule right now. 

The result is... a stall. Or, more charitably, maintenance. Instead of the hoped-for loss. Rowing as fast as I can only to avoid being sucked into Niagara Falls, instead of making headway. 

At first sight, that would be sheer frustration. But the good news is that I have finally stopped gaining, even though it´s on a much higher level than I had hoped for. 

Before I can turn my weight curve around, I must first stop gaining. So achieving this is a sign that things are going back in the right direction after all. 

Now if the multiple work overload I´m labouring under were to go away, I might even make time for exercise again. It won´t be easy, the bit of physical fitness I had reached being long evaporated, but I might get an exercise buddy in the guise of DH, who has been advised at his orthopedist´s that, of all things, nordic walking might be just the thing his shoulder joint needs. Go figure. 

We would not even have to purchase any additional equipment as we already have the sticks from way back. 

The only thing keeping us from starting is exhaustion. Finding at least half an hour each day for exercise gets hard when one is either busy at work or coming home so tired that one just drops down into an easy chair, puts up one´s feet and dozes off in a matter of minutes. I don´t think I have finished watching the evening news for several weeks. 

The lifelogging appliances I use tell me about my sleep time at night being way too short. Having to get up an hour earlier several times this week didn´t help that particularly. I wish I could but once get the uninterrupted eight to nine hours of sleep I know I run best on. Right now I am lucky if I get more than six. Knowing the effect of sleep deprivation on weight, that is definitely something I must work on. 

If only knowing what to change meant doing the change.

Julia

Strawberries, Asparagus and Wasps

After a rather frenetic last week, I had been looking forward to a nice relaxed weekend puttering around at home, including trying to catch some sun on our balcony. 

Unfortunately, we had visitors. 

For some days already, we had noticed that a wasp was regularly circling our balcony table, disappearing underneath it and reappearing some time later. Well, we weren´t certain it was the same wasp, so we paid no attention to it. 

This weekend, the wasp had brought a buddy along for company. As DH is allergic to wasp stings, having two of the critters buzzing around us all the time was out of the question. And they still kept flying underneath the table. So, we decided to find out what was so interesting down there and turned the table over. What we found was the openings that table had near where the legs are fixed jam-packed with yellow pollen and the greyish stuff wasps use for building their nests, plus, there were also several already-developed cocoons squeezed in there. Eeeek! To think that if we had not looked for some reason, there might have been a fully grown wasp´s nest down there...

In the building stage it was in, what we did was immerse the part in question in scalding hot water, then pry out the whole construction, all the while circled by the parent wasp who took two days to realize it (she?) had just been evicted and leave the balcony. Opposite that much tenacity, it was all too clear that reconstruction work would start immediately if we were to leave the offending table where it was. So we took it apart and put it in the basement (it´s plastic so the humidity won´t destroy it), and then went for a new table to put in its place. One that has no holes or ridges a wasp could use to fix a nest to. Even after we set up the new table, the wasp was back. I don´t know if it was still looking for the destroyed nest, or looking for a place to rebuild. In any case, after some time, it left. 

As it was, the critter had cost us almost all of Saturday afternoon. But we do have a new balcony table to show for it. I had actually planned to replace the old one for some time, it being a bit too large in diameter for our relatively narrow balcony, and the one we bought now is about fifteen centimeters smaller across, so, the balcony, too, looks more open and spacious with it. 

Losing Saturday afternoon to the wasps meant having to do laundry on Sunday, which in turn means I did not get around to doing the ironing as the clothes weren´t dry yet (I line-dry my laundry). 

On the food and weight front, I did buy myself some fresh strawberries for the first time in several years. It used to be that I was so busy that I kept missing out on strawberry season, thinking I would get some when the time for them was right and finding it was already over when I went to look. This year, I finally got some in time. 

The daily protein shake (with fresh strawberries in it) and cutting down on the nibbling have, at least, stopped my regain. I actually had the Fat Watch curve register a net loss for the week for the first time in about a year. Just 70 grams, but I did not gain. 70 grams a week, if repeated for a year, would mean seven pounds down. Which is not what I want to stop at, but the important thing is that I seem to have succeded in turning around that roller coaster back downwards at all. 

Having fresh asparagus with new potatoes and almost fat-free serrano ham as Sundays´ dinner was another of the joys of spring that one has to be careful not to miss out on, and on top, it´s recondensing-friendly. 

Finally, there´s hope of getting back to where I was one year ago. 

Julia